Mind Meld, Pt. 2

As far as I can tell, America has never fought a war in which mercenaries made up a large part of the armed force. But in Iraq, they are so central to the effort that, as Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution points out in a new report, “the private military industry has suffered more losses in Iraq than the rest of the coalition of allied nations combined.”

And, yes, the so-called private security contractors are mercenaries. They’re heavily armed. They carry out military missions, but they’re private employees who don’t answer to military discipline. On the other hand, they don’t seem to be accountable to Iraqi or U.S. law, either. And they behave accordingly.

[sigh]

Look, Blackwater may not (yet) be Executive Decisions, but Krugman’s right — these guys (like many others in the Bush administration) simply don’t feel themselves bound by the rule of law, Iraqi or otherwise.

Way to go, Georgie boy. Sell that “democracy” at gunpoint to a world increasingly skeptical of American intentions. It’ll take us a generation to clean your mess, asshat.